The U.S. Department of State, in its 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in Ukraine, in the section “Arbitrary Deprivation of Life and Other Unlawful or Politically Motivated Killings” emphasized that there were no reports in 2023 indicating that the government of Ukraine or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings. However, several cases from previous years remain uninvestigated.
For example, the murder of Denys Kireev, whom the Security Service of Ukraine publicly called a traitor, but who, on the eve of the Russian invasion, warned Ukrainian intelligence about Moscow’s plan to seize Kyiv, was mentioned.
At the end of the year, the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) continued to investigate the death in March 2022 of Denys Kireev, a member of the delegation that conducted preliminary talks with Russia. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) allegedly killed Kireev after it received a recording of Kireev allegedly being involved in treason. Senior government sources denied any allegations of treason against Kireev. According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the circumstances of Kireev’s death remained unclear
– the report says.
The investigation into the 2021 death of exiled Belarusian human rights activist Vitali Shishou (often reported as Vitali Shishov) reportedly continued until the end of the year, with no significant updates. Shishou disappeared in 2021 after leaving his Kyiv home, and his body was found hanging from a tree the next day. He had been in Kyiv since the fall of 2020 and helped found the non-governmental organization (NGO) Belarusian House, which helped Belarusians fleeing the regime of Alexander Lukashenko.
It also emphasized the need to investigate the killings and other crimes committed during the Revolution of Dignity protests in Kyiv in 2013-14.
